Jack Shafer goes through a short history of leaks in the crystal city:
Yet even as the insults pile up and the amateur psychoanalysis intensifies, keep in mind that Snowden’s leak has more in common with the standard Washington leak than should make the likes of Brooks, Simon and Cohen comfortable. Without defending Snowden for breaking his vow to safeguard secrets, he’s only done in the macro what the national security establishment does in the micro every day of the week to manage, manipulate and influence ongoing policy debates. Keeping the policy leak separate from the heretic leak is crucial to understanding how these stories play out in the press.
Secrets are sacrosanct in Washington until officials find political expediency in either declassifying them or leaking them selectively. It doesn’t really matter which modern presidential administration you decide to scrutinize for this behavior, as all of them are guilty. […]
If there were any justice in the world, the Cohen column Shafer references (ain’t gonna link) would earn him three hots and a cot in the nearest memory care facility.
Barry
“If there were any justice in the world, the Cohen column Shafer references (ain’t gonna link) would earn him three hots and a cot in the nearest memory care facility.”
During the Plame affair, Cohen stated that it wasn’t the job of the press to look into the dark alleys of politics. At that point, anybody who had bought the WaPo under the delusion that Cohen was a journalist should have had grounds to sue.
Todd
Who is Jack Shafer, what has he done with his life outside of paid punditry, and why should I give a fuck what he thinks?
Honest to god, we mock the Village, we don’t fluff it.
c u n d gulag
My comment done got etted!
Omnes Omnibus
@Todd: A journalist.
KCinDC
I really wish people hadn’t reminded me of the existence of Richard Cohen this week.
mistermix
@Todd: RTFA. He goes through a history of leaks in DC, something the insiders don’t like to talk about. Who cares if he’s inside, outside or upside down?
raven
@mistermix: Over Under Sideways Down
LAC
@Todd: I think that this just another way to ignore the Snowden yapping information to the Chinese government – it doesn’t fit the “just tell ’em hero guy is here” narrative flourishing here.
drkrick
For a lot of these people, the problem is that a schlub like Snowden is acting above his station. The purveyors of “acceptable” leaks are a lot higher on the food chain.
mistermix
@raven: Ha!
@LAC: Bieber forbid we have any context here.
Cacti
@Todd:
Because he wrote an article minimizing the felonious activities of mistermix’s new hero, Edward Snowden.
Older_Wiser
Lots of info on Snowden elsewhere. He claims he took “medical leave” from NSA for “epilepsy” which was probably another lie. Although after many years of gaming and staring at video screens (over at ArsTechnica, sounds like he was on 24/7 trying to gain info and bragging about himself and already calling himself an amateur model and “systems engineer” at age 22), he could have been affected in some way; maybe photosensitivity? http://www.epilepsy.com/info/family_kids_video
So, maybe this whole thing is from the fertile imaginations of 2 ego-centric glory-hounds, and yes, I find his “escape” to Hong Kong and talking to the Chinese about US security issues, policies and procedures very troubling.
Also, if you think the NSA has the time and personnel to read your every email and listen to every phone call, you’re more far gone than you think.
The Paultards are already trying to make money on this. http://www.politicususa.com/2013/06/12/agendas-outed-ron-paul-edward-snowdens-nsa-leak-raise-money.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politicus+USA+%29
mistermix
@Cacti: Because, according to you and a lot of the others around here, the only two categories he could fall into are are “world’s greatest hero” and “history’s greatest villain”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: Jesus fucking Christ. Are there no options other than hero or villain. Bad perso who did something good? Good person who did something bad? Complicated person who did something that has wide ramifications – many of which are not yet apparent so it might make sense to hold off on judging for a while?
El Tiburon
Can we just fucking kill the messenger already and move on. Such a distraction. We have a 2016 Presidential election and EmoProgs to worry about.
Hamsher.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: I can believe a good, but delusional, person could see something like this and believe it needs ot be exposed [again]. I cannot believe that same person is good if he takes a supposed cache of secrets and information with him to a foreign power that constantly attempts to penetrate our systems. So, yeah, I think we get to start judging at this point. Is he history’s greates villian? Of course not. He doesn’t even crack the top 100. But the GG nuthuggers, emo progs, and villagers (fine gathering of assholes there!) want us to believe the fictional narrative that he’s some sort of whistleblowing hero and he is neither.
Cacti
@mistermix:
I’ll just hold my breath waiting for your post on why Snowden has been talking like a mouthpiece of the PRC ever since he got to Hong Kong, right around the time the President of the PRC came for a State visit. Or his request to the WaPo that they publish a cryptographic key for the benefit of an unnamed foreign embassy.
You know, all those inconvenient points that make him look a lot more like a spy than a whistleblower.
Anya
@Omnes Omnibus: Some people have a tendency to see the world in binary good/evil terms.
But what I wonder about is why did this low level guy who worked for a contracting agency have access to that many secrets to begin with? Did anyone explain that yet?
mistermix
@Cacti:So I’m guessing you’re going for “history’s greatest villain” then. Good to know where you stand.
PIGL
@Cacti: Welcome to the B-J club of mentally challenged, petulant trolls. Your membership card and secret decoder ring are in the mail.
Cacti
@mistermix:
Nice strawman, but no.
More like “employee of the People’s Republic of China”.
Cacti
Gotta love BJ.
Point out any troublesome facts about the new internet left, folk hero that go against the narrative, and you’re:
Troll, binary thinker, mentally challenged, etc.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anya: The guy’s behavior definitely deserves scrutiny.
For me, the specifics of any of the programs being discussed are less important than the creeping loss of privacy to both the state and commercial entities. I would like to see our privacy laws and interpretations of the 4th Amendment get updated to reflect modern technology. Snowden, PRISM, et al., are trees in the forest.
Ash Can
This is actually a very interesting article. But Shafer errs in categorizing Snowden with the “professional” leakers. The pros, whose leaks he documents in detail, leak extremely strategically, with, as he points out, very specific objectives that are virtually always achieved. Entirely Machiavellian, to be sure, but very different from what Snowden and Greenwald did. What Snowden and Greenwald did is even different from what Ellsberg and Manning did. Ellsberg and Manning simply released documents — direct information whose provenance and content was unquestionable. They weren’t coy about it, and they didn’t change their stories over time (at this point, Greenwald is admitting that he has no idea whether the NSA actually has direct access to technology company databases, as he breathlessly claimed at the outset). They couldn’t change their stories — the stories were all there in black and white, in the documents themselves.
Shafer’s concluding paragraph summarizes some of the problems I have with this instance of leakage. He says:
There is no “starting;” it’s very definitely a restarting, of what happened 12 years ago. “Once-in-a-generation,” my ass. An alert commenter at LGF recently pointed out that, in fact, what Greenwald and Snowden did was actually a far clumsier version of what was done anonymously in 2006. By all means, read that USA Today article at the link. The anonymous sources cited in the article reveal exactly the same things revealed by Snowden, in far greater detail and with much more actual investigative journalism surrounding their information. How soon we all forget.
And forget the scare-quotes around the word “legal.” It is legal, period, and that’s the fucking problem, now, isn’t it? To imply that this secretiveness/spying/data collecting may not be legal is to deflect attention from the actual problem — the executive, legislative, and legal systems in this country that engender shady practices in the first place. Attack the problem at its source. Everything else does nothing but waste time.
And finally, like everyone else (including me), Shafer says that “limits” should be placed on our “power-mad” government, but he makes no mention of what those limits should be, or look like. This is understandable, of course; his article isn’t about that. But nowhere in this discussion do I hear anything but “the government shouldn’t be spying on its citizens.” Well, yeah, that’s a creepy thing. But here’s the problem — the USA is a superpower that has influence all around the world. Because of that, and because of our asinine foreign policies over the years, we’re a target. Military, politicians, citizens, all of us. How likely are any of us Joe Shmoes to be blown up by terrorist bombs? Not very. But there are a few people in Boston who lost that lottery just a few weeks ago.
What we all have to ask ourselves is where we want the tradeoff of security and privacy to be. Al Franken talked about this recently, in one of the most reasonable responses to the Snowden affair I’ve seen so far. He didn’t have any answers himself — only our American (voting) population as a whole does — but he asked all the right questions. And that’s where we have to start — not by lauding or castigating a leaker, but by examining just what was leaked, and whether it’s of any value to us as a nation.
Cassidy
@Cacti: Or honored guest of Russia.
PIGL
@Older_Wiser: Older you may be, but none the wiser for it. Just only smug, if not a flat out Decepticon.
The problem with total surveillance, you moron, is not that some boogie man is listening/reading/watching everything pertaining to special old you 24-7. It’s that the information is collected and permanently available. Nobody other than Spotless Christian Heroes is safe in their opinions, person, or livelihood because the totality of information collected would be sufficient to destroy anyone the moment the authorities, or someone paying them, considers it be in their interest.
Cassidy
@PIGL: You do realize that all this information was stored and easily available for the right price, right? This isn’t new. I’ll say again, if you think that some gov’t entity hasn’t been storing your online traffic since day one, you’re naive. Secondly, you hgave up your privacy when you logged into AOL or Prodigy all those many moons ago. You did that. You signed it away. You signed it away when you bought your smartphone and when you decided to let google maps tell you how to get from point A to point B. You did that. The gov’t is no more a boogeyman now than it has ever been.
Ash Can
And PS, Ellsberg didn’t go running to the Viet Cong with his info, nor did Bradley Manning make a beeline to Moscow or Beijing with his. When I mentioned castigating the leaker, I meant it in terms of not losing sight of what we actually want to debate and resolve. In Snowden’s case, it’s kind of difficult to remove his actions from the context of his in-your-face espionage.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ash Can: The quotes around “legal” are there because some of the programs have not actually been subject to judicial review on the merits. Some people, I among them, think (or hope) that the programs will be found to violate the Fourth Amendment. As a result, the programs are not violating the law as it stands right now, but the law that allows the programs may (or should) be invalidated.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
Considering the Roberts Court just signed off on post-arrest DNA collection as part of routine booking procedures, I don’t see a voting majority of the current SCOTUS as friendly to broad Fourth Amendment protections.
Ash Can
@Omnes Omnibus: I see. Thanks for the info.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: Yeah well, I am hoping that there will be changes to the Court by the time surveillance cases get there on the merits. Also, I think the DNA swab case is fucked up.
Emma
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, how I wish. But considering the makeup of our Supreme Court and the rightward turn it has taken over the last eight or so years, maybe more, I am not holding my breath.
This is why I vote Democratic, even when the candidate leaves a lot to be desired. The makeup of the Supreme Court is up for grabs and if we get a Republican president after Obama, all bets are off.
mistermix
@Cacti:
If that was indeed what you were doing, then you might be justified in playing the victim of the leftist cabal. Instead, you object to this, and any other discussion that doesn’t begin, end and have as the lead sentence of every paragraph “Snowden is a spy/villain/etc”. Shafer’s piece is anything but a statement of support for him. RTFA. It peripherally mentions Snowden.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
You and me both.
+elventybillion
Cacti
@mistermix:
When have you, or any of his resident fan club even suggested this as a possibility in your litany of front page posts about him?
PIGL
@Cacti: Dear all of the above: he is only a left wing folk hero in your fevered imagination. The issue is the surveillance state, not this particular individual.
Cacti
@PIGL:
LOL
Best one I’ve heard all morning.
mistermix
@Cacti: This is the first post I’ve made that has the word “Snowden” in it. Check my history.
Anya
@Cacti: I think Snowden is troubled person who’s way in over his head with this disclosure business. I also think what he did with the Chinese news agency is very wrong and bordering on being treasonous. But I don’t think he’s evil or means to harm the country. He might genuinely believe his own hype.
PIGL
@Cassidy: No, I never really did consent to what you claim I did, and neither did anyone else. The system has evolved in that direction, it is true, but nobody ever consented to what you seem to regard as the inevitable consequences of the digital revolution. This back-dating claim “there is nothing new here” is hard to understand as anything but desperate and pathetic Obotting.
Cacti
@mistermix:
And only your 7th front page post in the past 6 days dealing with this topic.
Omnes Omnibus
@PIGL: to be fair, there have been a number of people who have cast Snowden as a brave whistleblower risking his life for freedom. I don’t think we have enough facts to figure out who Snowden really is yet. Like you, however, I find it somewhat immaterial. The status of surveillance and privacy in an age of electronic communications is what is important. I do rather despair of have a rational debate on the issue though.
Cacti
@PIGL:
If you currently or have ever previously used or owned a credit card, debit card, or store discount card of any kind, you most certainly have.
Most people gave their consent thoughtlessly and without really examining what they agreed to give in exchange for the above, but they still signed on the dotted line for their piece of convenience plastic.
lol
No one had any problems breathlessly discussing the personality and motives of Richard Armitage when he exposed nepotism at the CIA. Weird.
mistermix
@Cacti: Sorry we’re not more of the Fox News of the left that you want us to be, ignoring important stories just because they don’t fit whatever narrative we’d like to promote.
PIGL
@Cacti: You know all that boilerplate on your average software contract? I don’t really feel bound by it, either, and if our Reptilian Overlords one day say that I did (“Look, right here, you consented to our right to eat the entire moon here on page 45”)I will not find that convincing either. Your “company store” approach to civil liberties, that one credit card or internet account makes inevitable, and in fact justifies —as my own damn fault— the surveillance state is disturbing, but totally without foundation, in my opinion.
PIGL
@Omnes Omnibus: 100% agreed.
Suffern ACE
@Omnes Omnibus: The “legal” issue of these leaks might not actually involve us. The laws that have been broken might not exactly be ours. It is not illegal in any sense to, say, spy on Chinese officials, or even Chinese citizens for that matter. That’s kind of what the NSA and CIA are supposed to be doing. Hopefully they are doing that well and we know what the Chinese are developing for their military. Hopefully we’re not doing it for other reasons.
Its not really illegal here to, say, get a banker drunk in Switzerland so that he’ll help our spies gather intelligence in their opaque banking system. That said, it might be breaking Swiss laws to do that.
The focus on our laws and “what is being done in our name” is of concern to us. But it is possible that the CIA and NSA are following our laws to the letter. Aren’t keeping dossiers on all of us. Just use the data to go after bad guys and spies. But that doesn’t mean what’s being put out in the press doesn’t reveal how lawless the security agencies are, court or no court scrutiny.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: We could go into the whole knowing and intelligent waiver of rights thing if you want, but I need to be in a meeting shortly, so let’s do it at another time.
Cassidy
@PIGL: Ignorance is not an excuse. Yes, you consented by hitting “dial”. Whether or not you want to accept responsibility for your own actions is your business, but let’s stop pretending that you, I, or anyone is some sort of unwitting victim to the big, bad police state.
Cassidy
@PIGL: Well, there is your opinion and then there is fact.
Higgs Boson's Mate
The government is collecting information from internet traffic and cell phone calls. We have only a vague idea of the granularity of the information being collected and no idea of what’s being done with it. That’s very troubling.
The people hired by the government to assist in the process allowed a young man with a dubious resumé to walk out of the door with an unknown amount of information. That is fucking disturbing because it suggests that this operation does a piss poor job of maintaining the integrity of what it’s collecting. If Snowden could do it so could others and they may have done so at the behest of actors whose identities we can only guess at. Unfortunately, they may not have outed themselves as publicly as Snowden did and they may still be at it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suffern ACE: This is entirely possible. Again, it is one of the reasons I am not really focused on any particular program but rather the broader outlines of privacy, surveillance, and our rights.
Cacti
@mistermix:
I’d say you’ve been promoting your preferred narrative for several days now.
Cacti
@PIGL:
Well, what you feel and what a court of law would find under the law of contracts are probably not the same thing.
LAC
@Cacti: It know. I have already made the point that if the extremes frame the debate, we are dunzo in making any progress about the Patriot Act or FISA.
It fucking bothers me that this guy is out there spewing classified information to China, alright? That is not what that initial slobbering self promoting piece of shit article about him in the Guardian was about. He was allegedly some unassuming nerdy dude just out to the the right thing for amuuerica. What other information or countries is this asshat going to peddle too?
And funny how even the Guardian is walking back statements.
It is a story that is starting to stink to high heaven and while I do not think he is some cartoon villian, I do not think he is some lost little lamb in the woods either.
Hill Dweller
@LAC:
Both the Guardian and Post shit the bed with their PRISM reporting. I don’t know if they were burned by Snowden or didn’t understand the technical aspects of the program.
The tech websites have been far better than the beltway/MSM.
Cacti
@LAC:
But information wants to be free. Be free little information! Spread your wings and fly!
mistermix
@Cacti: Perhaps, but my narrative is the one that’s being reported in the newspapers we generally view as getting facts straight, and yours is being reported where, exactly? Throw a few links out of your preferred narrative.
Cacti
@mistermix:
Excepting all of those parts that have been walked back already.
Also, who’s this “we” you speak of when you refer to the newspapers. Do you have a mouse in your pocket?
Nice argumentum ad populum by the way. Once upon a time, the prevailing narrative among the stalwarts of the newspaper biz was that Saddam has WMD, yea war with Iraq! I was skeptical then too, b/c I looked at the facts and made up my own mind.
LAC
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42121_The_Guardian_quietly_walks_back_their_PRISM_overreach_without_correcting_previous_reporting
http://bobcesca.thedailybanter.com/blog-archives/2013/06/greenwald-doesnt-understand-ftp.html
http://thedailybanter.com/2013/06/greenwald-sticks-with-his-story-in-spite-of-growing-questions/
http://world.time.com/2013/06/13/beijing-reacts-to-snowden-claims-u-s-hacked-hundreds-of-chinese-targets/
Just some stories out there. And, clutch the pearls, even DKos doesn’t like the stench. But maybe they are cray cray too.
LAC
Well, I listed some stories. If it gets out of moderation, take a read.
PIGL
@Cassidy: It is simply an absurd pretense that the widespread acceptance by individuals of private contracts of dubious merit and legal status should abrogate long-standing constitutional safeguards. Only a legalistic idiot, or the plain malicious, could claim such a thing. In my opinion, of course.
PIGL
@Cacti: fucking contracts do not violate long-standing constitutional safeguards. One cannot, for example, sell oneself into slavery, and not all contracts signed are fucking binding, as you know full well.
Ted & Hellen
@mistermix:
Obot lovers of George and Barack’s security state have assured us, as they slime and smear Snowden, that the source of information is all that matters. The information itself is unimportant, no matter how verified it ends up being.
Ted & Hellen
@Cacti:
How many wars of choice based on lies that killed a hundred thousand people and cost trillions of dollars has China started in recent history, you blind idiot?
Ted & Hellen
@Emma:
Dear sweet, stupid Enemma can always be relied on to support the least horrible candidate presented to us by the Oligarchy.
The Friendly Libertarian
@Ted & Hellen:
Exactly, China is a very peaceful country and has never murdered people in any numbers like the Federal Government has one in the past 100 years.
Ted & Hellen
@Cassidy:
Stunning really.
You missed your calling as a staffer for Senator McCarthy, Fat Assidy.
LAC
@Ted & Hellen: Please…you twins of twattery having mistermix’s back is like a teats on a fish – fucking useless.
Mnemosyne
@Ted & Hellen:
You mean other than Korea, Vietnam, and killing off their own people by the millions?
But, hey, the enemy of your enemy is your friend, so if China is poking at Barack Obama, they’re the most awesomest bestest friend EVAH!
The Friendly Libertarian
China is not a threat to freedom in the world in the way the Federal Government and its Empire are.
Hoodie
I’m not sure Snowden really knows that much, anyway, and is just milking his 15 minutes of fame. All the stuff that has been revealed by the Guardian and the Post so far was already out there in some form or another, and would probably have been known already by anyone, such as a foreign government or a sophisticated terrorist organization, with a specific interest. The NSA is probably more concerned about what Snowden may actually have had access to that was particularly sensitive and has not yet been disclosed, because they may have a gigantic security problem. Secondarily, they may be concerned about a highly charged general public discussion about what many people knew was happening and how that discussion may make their job more difficult in the future if what they feel are undue limitations are placed on their ability to monitor net activity. I imagine gathering nodal traffic data has other uses than just tracking your run of the mill al Qaeda terrorists, such as trying to detect money laundering and cybersnooping by China and other foreign entities, and, possibly, designing cyber attacks against such entities. I doubt the NSA, which, after all, is just a bunch of Americans who generally don’t have shaved heads, pinkie rings and white fluffy cats, has any particular desire to snoop on Americans. Therefore, the NSA may weigh the dangers of their monitoring apparatus in a manner that puts their own operational imperatives above concerns about potential misuse of those monitoring capabilities, because they don’t see such dangers as plausible. Christ, I used to play soccer with some of those guys when I lived in Maryland, they have kids and dogs and mortgages just like everyone else. Snowden did bring the issue to light without anything all that new, but the initial GG-fed hype threatens to cover it in a fog of hysteria, and hysteria often produces bad outcomes. Snowden yakking with the Chinese ain’t helping. In that respect, Snowden’s motives and behavior do matter. If the fucker was so concerned, he would come back home and face the music like Ellsberg and Manning and quit making everyone wonder what he might be telling the Chinese. I seriously doubt anyone wants to kill him or that he was ever in real danger.
LAC
@The Friendly Libertarian: Will you be leaving us soon then? OMG, you and Snowden can be like the bestest buddies in like the bestest country in the world!
The Friendly Libertarian
The banality of evil, once again.
The Friendly Libertarian
Soviet defectors didn’t stay and “face the music”. Are they cowards too?
The USA, and its Federal Government, at this point is little different from the USSR of 1980.
MomSense
@Ash Can:
I think that was a very well stated description of the situation we find ourselves in. The great challenge for me, as someone whose efforts are spent organizing, is that the majority of our population are willing to sacrifice privacy for more security. We also will not weather a terrorist attack without wanting to hold our government officials responsible for not preventing it. I’m concerned that a majority would support an increased state of surveillance and security if another attack were to happen.
As with so many issues, it is much easier to point at the President and say why haven’t you restored our privacy or done this that or the other thing instead of looking at how committed we are to working on this issue. There was some energy around privacy when the Patriot Act was passed but we were in the extreme minority just as we were in the extreme minority in not supporting the war in Iraq. By 2007 with the re-authorization of FISA there was some opposition (interestingly the barackobama website offered those opposed a place from which to organize and write) but it was still a minority opinion.
And the President does deserve some credit for adding additional oversight to this process in the form of DoJ and Congressional review every 90 days even though he certainly didn’t have to and the next President will not be required to continue these policies. The reality is that if we want to strike the balance more toward privacy WE have a lot of work to do. Building a committed movement to organize around legislation is a patient process. It takes significant resources. We certainly have not been able to do this in the last 12 years. I think this has to be discussed if we are going to have a rigorous debate on what to do about our “security state”.
AHH onna Droid
What if Snowden isn’t a good person? What if he’s a liar with a personality disorder who fell in with the wrong crowd and has rationalized his highly anti social behavior as ‘heroic’?
AHH onna Droid
@The Friendly Libertarian: lolwut
AHH onna Droid
@PIGL: Or a Mocrosoft EULA apologist.
Ted & Hellen
@The Friendly Libertarian:
Really amateur dodge.
How many wars of aggression has china been responsible for lately?
Ted & Hellen
@Hoodie:
Well gee, since you’re not sure, I guess we can consider this entire incident closed.
LAC
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/world/asia/chinese-journalist-beijing.html?src=recg
Ah, yes…China, that bastion of free expression.
Cassidy
@Ted & Hellen: Actually,they are considering asylum there. So I’m not sure what you’re on about. Do you not read news? Are you slow?
Good to see you found some backbone again, chickenshit. I was starting to miss your carefully crafted comments to be as offensive as possible. You were so scared and skittish for a couple of weeks. How is business, btw?
Ted & Hellen
@Mnemosyne:
Fuck off, dishonest twat.
Mnemosyne
@Hoodie:
That’s what really worries me about Snowden — I think the information he probably had access to at his level would be far more interesting to one of the foreign governments whose communications were being monitored by the US than they are to US citizens. He’s throwing an “information wants to be free!” cloak over what he did, but I suspect it’s a smokescreen for what he was actually up to.
Mnemosyne
@Ted & Hellen:
Awww, poor Timmy is starting to realize that his new hero may not be so heroic after all. Hey, why don’t you ask the Falun Gong guy in Anne Laurie’s story about how much better it is to live in China than it is here? After all, living in a Boston suburb is just as horrible and oppressive as living in a Chinese slave labor camp, amirite?
Cassidy
@Mnemosyne: I’m sure the Falun Gong gentlemen didn’t get to play with crayons either. But that’s not fair. Timmy has never met a white person he wasn’t willing to defend, so of course he doesn’t think highly of that brown skinned Chinese man.
Ted & Hellen
@Cassidy:
Business is great. I’m working on three pieces for commenters here…commissioned as a result of Cole’s promotion of my work. Three others have been completed and delivered.
I’d love to do a commission for you, but there’s not enough canvas in Boston to fit your fat, pimpled, and Fascist ass on.
How’s that career hiding from your boss going? I see you’ve got plenty of time on your hands again today.
Cassidy
@Ted & Hellen: Lol, you’re a pretty lucky guy. If M_C were here, who knows what kind of crazy shit she’d have done. I can think of a few things, but no need to say them again.
No thank you, I can get a crayon drawing from my kids. I don’t need to pay the inflated suburbanite price. As a matter of fact, I made a Timmy O original just this morning, but I had to flush, publci restrooms and all.
Career is going great. How’s yours? Do you think most of your would be customers have the same opinions on Trayvon Martin? Maybe you should take an informal poll?
Ted & Hellen
@Cassidy:
Why does my opinion that George Zimmerman should have a fair trial, and that you have no fucking clue what happened that night, like all the rest of us, set badly with you? You a fan of lynchings?
What does any of that have to do with my customers? Or your boss whom you hide from?
Suffern ACE
Tibet has always been chinese?
Mnemosyne
@Suffern ACE:
Of course! Because only the US starts wars of aggression. Everyone else is just reclaiming their rightful territory, and who are those Tibetans to complain about it?
ericblair
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know if he’s got much of a plan at this point, besides trying to avoid the biggest problem in front of his face at the moment. I’m not getting the vibe that this guy is some sort of mastermind playing world governments off of each other. Hong Kong has been one of the libertoonian paradises, as far as I can tell only because it has relatively low tax rates. He could have turned this into some sort of hacker utopia in his mind, or possibly had a little birdie in his ear helping him along. Now that the Chinese are threatening him with prison time, presumably to help his memory and give him a little encouragement to cooperate with his new pals, he’s saying whatever will keep his ass out of trouble for the next 24 hours.
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: Yes. But that said, we’re pretty much the only folks out there (except maybe the UK and France) who are claiming that everything that happens anywhere and anyplace on six continents is somehow in our interest.
Cassidy
@Ted & Hellen: Sure Timmy. That’s your reasoning. We all believe that.
That’s okay chickenshit. We know what you really mean.
AHH onna Droid
@Hill Dweller: From what I read, they.were burned by the need to Frist! like some annoying dickbag on every commrnt thread ever.
Ted & Hellen
@Cassidy:
What’s this “we” you regularly rely on as a tribal and insecure rhetorical fallback, Assidy?
Do you have trouble speaking only for yourself? Who exactly do you include when you use “we” as a comforting pronoun to make yourself feel a sense of belonging to a clique larger than your little fat self?
Racist!
Soonergrunt
@mistermix: You know, some of us do think that he’s neither of those, right?
Higgs Boson's Mate
@ericblair:
You make some good points. If I was running an espionage operation to determine what the NSA was doing I’d make it my first order of business to identify people whose weaknesses might be exploited.
Ted & Hellen
George Zimmerman is Hispanic, Assidy.
Why do you hate Hispanics and all other Latin Americans?
RACIST
Suffern ACE
For all we know, he was simply paid by Booz to look like he was leaking important information that compromised the security agency to avoid sequesteration cuts.
Man, somedays I miss having Ben Franklin around…
Cassidy
@Ted & Hellen: Ahhh, it’s so cute when it tries to be witty. I can see it now sitting at the table trying to be humorous, but underneath the children are still seething about when it had its mid life crisis and told his
beardex-wife that he’d been lying to himself and her the whole time. I’m sure they appreciated that, the throwing away of its job and the years of lying just so it could make drawings with crayons. How often did it cheat on them to try and keep itself sane? Good times.I wonder how much resentment they keep hidden? I bet they spend a lot off nights laughing behind its back.
Cassidy
@Suffern ACE: I’ll still take M_C. her conspiracy theories were at least fun.
Soonergrunt
@Cacti: @Cacti: “I’d say you’ve been promoting your preferred narrative for several days now.”
You know, leaving aside whether or not he’s right, or I’m right about the things I post, or John’s right–that’s kind of the perogative of front pagers here. John extends that to us. It is, of course, your perogative to take us to task over our handling of subjects (correct vs. incorrect facts, etc) and even over whether or not you agree or disagree with out individual takes on these things, but isn’t it a little silly to go to town on somebody for posting his preferred narrative on a site where he/she has been given commission to do that very thing?
Ted & Hellen
@Cassidy:
Wow.
I’ll let that comment just sit there and speak for itself to this entire board.
Now when you’re done vilifying me personally, can you circle back around to what any of that has to do with Mr. Snowden being a communist or your anti-Hispanic racism?
Thanks.
ericblair
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Anybody in the national security biz gets counterintelligence training (which can consist of FBI-produced movies of various levels of entertainment quality, and old G-men telling war stories). Standard recruitment technique: target with access to juicy stuff starts bitching about gummint and agency, either how they’re a bunch of fascists, too soft on commies, whatever. Foreign intelligence agents identify said loudmouth, approach him saying that they’re either fellow US government interests or close allies, and tell target about how there’s a whole bunch of people who agree with target’s rant, but can’t do anything about it. Yet. They really need target to get some information for them that will bust the rotten mess wide open, and oh yeah, we’ll make it worth your while since you’re taking such a risk, and oh yeah, we’ve got a hot young friend over here who’s really interested in freedom fighters, btw.
Target wanders off and gets data, hands it over. Foreign intelligence now asks for more, nicely but with the understanding that the target is in real shit if he fails to keep cooperating since he’s committed felonies now, so target keeps doing it willingly or unwillingly. Target eventually gets busted, and finds out that his buddies are actually the hostile interests that his heroic freedom fighting was supposed to stop! Gadzooks! Cue Alannis Morissette “Ironic” and fade to black.
There’s a longer and more involved jeremiad about the security clearance process, but maybe later.
Ted & Hellen
@Cassidy:
Your racism against Hispanics?
Your love for Obama’s security state?
Your overweight problem?
Your neglect of your “job?”
Nothing more to say except “you were a closeted fag so kill yourself?”
Telling.
LAC
@Soonergrunt: Fair enough, but this so much more at stake than being able to keep a narrative up. People come to these sites for information, some honesty. Not addressing holes and chunks in a story because it doesn’t jibe with what you wrote in a fevered pitch a couple of days ago doesn’t help your argument. Particularly, when the narrative here is laced with “fuck you for not rioting over Snowden” and “get your head out of your asses, the gubermint is reading your emails because Greenwald told me so”, and “how dare you point out that the Patriot Act and FISA have been with us for a while and not an invention of the Kenyan drone man?”
Narrative might be the reason why Greenwald will get hoisted on his own petard and why Snowden’s “hero” crown is becoming unglued.
LAC
@Cassidy: Oh, I wouldn’t let this turd get to you. He is not important. Besides coming here, the only highlight of his day is rearranging his junk. Just ignore him. Besides, do you really think there is a market for feces smeared canvases? I don’t…
mistermix
@Cacti: If it’s anything, it’s an appeal to authority, not an argument ad populum. Get your fallacies straight.
But it wasn’t even an appeal to authority, just a statement of the current reality: multiple newspapers have reported a set of facts, many of which have been confirmed by Members of Congress or the NSA. That’s where I’m getting my narrative.
You have an alternative one, where all of these papers (which are still headlining those same charges) have walked back those charges. You provide no links. And when others who have provided links to purported “walkbacks”, what they turn out to be is minor corrections to subsidiary details.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Cassidy: nerve: hit. Listen to it squeal!
That’s simply delightful. I wonder if special Timmy’s kids know dad’s a pedophile?
Perhaps they should.
sharl
Can’t tell if s/he’s a parody or (FSM forbid) actually sincere, but I’m liking this commenter The Friendly Libertarian. S/he makes me laugh,* which is the most important thing.
[*On this score, the rest of you have been dropping the ball of late (JSF excepted). Try to be better about that from here on out, m’kay?]
wrb
I just can’t believe he chose to go to Hong Kong if he didn’t already have a comfy future worked out with Chinese intelligence.
He’d be at risk there otherwise. They’d just snatch him and his computer.
LAC
@mistermix: I guess by others, you mean me. I don’t think what is being walked back is minor at all. It is important enough to be walked back, it is important enough that tech and IT sites are discussing it. I don’t know what major papers you are talking about, but the Washington Post, NY Times, and the The Guardian have had to correct their stories on PRISM and data mining. Greenwald hasn’t but quel surpris…
Now, maybe none of this matters to you, and like you say, this is your blog. But I think it is a bit thin skinned to get huffy that it is pointed out to you. The story is changing and the facts are not not what they were two days ago.
Soonergrunt
@Ted & Hellen: You are the last person on this board who will get any sympathy over being the subject of a personal attack.
Pots and kettles and so forth and such like.
Ted & Hellen
@LAC:
Actually, you are being unfair.
Rearranging my junk is pleasurable and productive.
My feces and vomit pieces sell even better…
Ted & Hellen
@Soonergrunt:
You’re an idiot, as always SG.
The abuse almost always starts from the Bots. I give as good as I get, military fetishist tax payer leech dude.
Many other non bots here get similar treatment when daring to speak against the BotWall of Stupid.
Have you noticed there are more and more non bots here these days? The twilight of the BushObama administration is nigh…
Ted & Hellen
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Again: I’ll let this comment sit here and marinate in its bile for all to see…
LAC
@Ted & Hellen: marinated and noted…and no, there will not be a Jerry Lewis style telethon on behalf of you and your hurt feelings. You are a pig and the slop you throw out there in the universe comes back to you. No one here is going to rally around you.
Soonergrunt
@Ted & Hellen: Kind of like looking in a mirror for you, isn’t it?
Mnemosyne
@ericblair:
Spies always have handlers. I’m really starting to get interested in seeing how this all plays out.
For the GG fans out there, I will state once again that I’m pretty sure that he’s a dupe of Snowden’s, not a conspirator. Though I’m sure there are some FBI agents who are trying to track GG down for a face-to-face conversation right now.
Ted & Hellen
@Soonergrunt:
Not at all, dumb fuck.
But your obliviousness here is in keeping with your general posting personae, so do please carry on.
Ted & Hellen
@Mnemosyne:
Well, since the most dishonest and one of the top five most repulsive commenters here is “pretty sure,” I think we can call this controversy closed.
How long ago did your persistent yeast infection invade your pinhead?
Hoodie
@Ted & Hellen: This thread died a while ago and is starting to stink. All yours, asshole, enjoy yourself. Clean up after you’re done.
Soonergrunt
@Ted & Hellen: personae? I have more than one? Look, I know that I’m just the dumb grunt, but do you think you could try to not be too much of an overly pretensions pseudo-intellectual bitch queen? There’s a fine line between rapier-like viciousness and looking like an un-cast extra cheerleader from a Glee episode, and you’re about 25 paces past that line dancing up a storm.
And missing the difference between a singular form and a plural isn’t helping your image with the former vs the latter.
Ted & Hellen
@Hoodie:
Ummm…you just sought out and commented on the dead and stinky thread. What does this say about you?
I like dead, stinky things. That’s why I’m always fighting with Assidy and the Yeast Infection Lady.
Ted & Hellen
@Soonergrunt:
Scrape the barrel much, Killer?
Cause no one at BJ ever misses the difference between plural and singular.
Douche.
Cacti
@Soonergrunt:
Why yes, I’m aware who all of the king shits of turd mountain are. I was needling mistermix over his “who me? i’m just reporting the news” routine.
Soonergrunt
@Cacti: it wasn’t about declaring who the the king shits are. It was about asking why you feel the need to be pissed because he’s not saying the thing you want him to say.
FWIW I don’t happen to agree with his take but it’s his take to…er…take.
Soonergrunt
@Ted & Hellen: any time I deal with you, I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel.
It’s the nature of dealing with you. Very much like scraping dog shit off the sole of one’s shoe, it is.
And it’s “paid killer,” you dumb son of a bitch. Get it right.